


An Eidolon, named NIGHT

by Whitnium



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, M/M, Night Terrors, SEP era, They swear like sailors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 05:46:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12742191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whitnium/pseuds/Whitnium
Summary: An Eidolon, named NIGHTOn a black throne reigns upright- Edgar Allan Poe, Dream-LandJack and Gabe in the SEP Era, where something goes wrong at night.





	An Eidolon, named NIGHT

Gabriel doesn't remember exactly when they started sleeping in the same bed, but the habit soon becomes customary, as natural to them as breathing. They finish their training or their next round of injections or what the fuck else and always find their way to each other at the end of it, wordless, shedding clothes and facades and collapsing together under the weight of what their lives have become.

Jack is a fitful sleeper: always tense and unnaturally hot, his every molecule vibrating with pent-up energy. Some nights it is nigh unbearable to tolerate the human equivalent of a nuclear reactor so close to his bare skin, but Gabriel learns to _want it_ , somehow. Hell, he doesn't think he can sleep _without_ it anymore.

Gabriel is used to being startled awake at night, of course. Jack's insatiable need for perpetual motion twists him in all sorts of unusual positions and more than once Gabriel has been jarred awake when his ass unceremoniously meets the floor.

"...Sorry," Jack will mumble in response to Gabriel's cursing as the latter pushes him over to make room, but almost instantaneously the two are in a knot again.

It is rhythmic, this unusual nighttime ritual, something comfortable--until one night, it suddenly isn't.

The first thing Gabriel remembers is a swift jab to his side with enough force to nearly drive the wind from his chest. He bolts awake, one arm curling around his stomach and the other raised in protest.

"The fuck, Morrison?"

Jack is supine beside him, body ramrod straight in a way that is very disconcerting; his eyes are open but not seeing anything, freakishly distant and glassy with tears. Gabriel hesitates, places one hand on Jack's shoulder, but receives absolutely no reaction.

"Jack?" He pushes harder, can feel Jack's body sink into the bed. "Jackie?"

There is a burst of motion and sound that Gabriel can barely register for its abruptness. A howl of a scream and Jack is upon him, a man fighting for his life. Gabriel recoils, momentarily stupefied, before instinct whips his arm in a blocking position as Jack tries a devastating uppercut. Gabriel has no time to think: he grabs Jack with one arm and hurls him off the bed in a harried suplex. Momentum forces them to roll twice and the motion stops with Jack straddling Gabriel. Every breath is shallow and frantic and Jack is trembling as if his bones are trying to work their way out of his skin. His sightless eyes dart back and forth, searching for a predator that is only in his mind.

"Jackie!" Gabriel all but screams it, hoarse and ugly. "Wake up!"

For a hopeful heartbeat he thinks it might have worked, but Jack screams that frantic wail again and Gabriel is too focused on the horror in the younger man's expression to notice the fist that connects with the left side of his face. The force of it knocks his teeth together and he cries out in alarm at the same moment that Jack leaps to his feet and bounds over the bed and toward the exit.

Gabriel can taste hot iron. He stumbles upright to see Jack pounding at the door, scratching at it with fingers hooked like talons, struggling for each breath like a man drowning. Jack looks back over his shoulder frantically, realizes Gabriel's approach, and turns to face his adversary again, fists raised.

"Easy, Jackie." Two hands raised in surrender. "...Just snap out of it."

The door slides open unexpectedly and Jack almost tumbles backward through it. Two security guards are upon him instantaneously but their touch is enough to turn Jack's struggles into white-hot fury. He is stronger than an average man even now, only months into SEP, and sends one of the men flying against the opposite side of the hall with a kick. The other guard presses himself against the wall and draws his gun and Gabriel throws himself into the fray while only being vaguely aware that he is screaming "fuck, fuck, fuck!"

Gabriel dives: not at Jack, but at the security guard. They tumble together and the guard's shot goes wide and into the ceiling.

"The hell is wrong with you," Gabriel wheezes as the guard pointedly ignores him, taking aim again. Gabriel knocks the gun away at the same time that Jack runs past them, completely oblivious to their existence, and disappears down the hall. The first guard collects himself and takes off after Jack, gun drawn, and Gabriel feels his heart sink. He grabs the discarded gun, much to the dismay of its owner, and stumbles down the hallway himself.  

Gabriel rounds the corner nearly trips over Jack's body. The security guard there is yelling at him and it is only after a second of his heart hammering in his throat that Gabriel realizes he has his own gun pointed in the guard's direction. He lowers himself very slowly, hands raised, and places the gun on the ground as he is ordered.

"Reyes." One of the doctors is there, somehow, and there is an empty syringe in his hand. "What the _hell_ is going on here?"

* * *

The doctors keep Jack sedated for three days, machines attached to his head, watching his brainwaves with sick fascination. The only time Gabriel sees Jack at all is when he forces himself into the restricted area with four unconscious security guards in his wake. It takes a gun to his head--Gabriel is so intent on _Jack_ that he doesn't watch his flank--and a stern warning of his impending execution for Gabriel to finally back down.

He barely sleeps in those nights; there is a void where Jack's body should be, dark and cold. Gabriel paces for hours, thoughts meandering each and every direction until his body gives out and he passes out for a few minutes before roll call in the morning.

Jack returns to him a ghost. Sickly pale, expression frayed, body drooping in exhaustion. He is looking around the room furtively and making every attempt to _not_ meet Gabriel's eyes, a presentation so unlike Jack that Gabriel entertains the horrible thought that Jack isn't _Jack_  anymore.

"Hey, sunshine." He reaches for Jack's arm tentatively. "You look like hell."

Jack tenses under the touch, holds his breath. Their eyes meet for just a second, long enough for Jack to see the fading bruise on Gabriel's face. He barks a laugh but the sound is hollow, tries to smile but the movement does not smooth the stress lines on his face. 

"Yeah, so do you."

"I, uh..." Gabriel's tongue is suddenly too big for his mouth. He swallows hard. "You're not hurt, are you?"

Jack shrugs, hesitates a moment before his resolve finally breaks and he entreats Gabriel with pleading eyes: haunted, empty, questioning.

 "I don't remember a thing, Gabe. What the hell happened?"

* * *

The tension is thick between them that night. Jack keeps his back to Gabriel, curled more into himself than against his partner. Gabriel settles for one hand on Jack's waist, a comforting half-embrace, and waits for the steady sound of the other man's breathing before he lets himself doze off.

Gabriel is almost convinced he is dreaming when he hears the screaming and realizes only too late that it is happening again. The space beside him is empty and Jack is curled in a corner, hands over his face, muttering nonsensically.

"Jack..." He takes a step toward the corner but stops short as Jack growls in warning.

_Well, shit._

Jack goes on the offensive without further provocation. He lunges at Gabriel, shouldering him back several steps and against the wall. Gabriel ducks at the same moment that Jack's fist whistles through the space his head once occupied and crashes through plaster. Jack's rage is temporarily deflected and Gabriel has enough of an opening to wrap his arms around his attacker's waist and tackle him to the floor.

Gabriel doesn't know how he does it, but somehow he has a hand on each of Jack's arms, pinning him. Jack struggles beneath him with preternatural strength and Gabriel grits his teeth with the effort to control him. It is not the way Gabriel would prefer to handle the situation, but adrenaline is a savage thing.

His captive roars in frustration. Gabriel holds fast, trying to curb his own breaths and the cacophony of emotions in his head.

"I'm sorry Jack--stop it, stop it," he intones as Jack snarls. "I have no other choice."

Time moves fast and slow all at once. Eventually Jack's breath evens, his wild expression softens, and his body relaxes by degrees until he is limp. Gabriel has to convince his hands to loosen their frantic grip. He sighs tremendously and sits back on his haunches, grimaces as tension flees from his arms and shoulders and a gnawing pain rushes in to replace it. He works out a knot in his neck and buries his head in his hands in frustration and worry and all the other feelings he doesn't have the energy to name.

Gabriel can't go back to sleep that night and, truth be told, he's not sure if Jack is truly sleeping either. The other man constantly twitches violently and without warning, mumbles sounds but not words. More than once Gabriel is half prepared to jump into action again before Jack finally falls still.

Hours later Jack eventually stumbles into consciousness and sits up drunkenly, one hand reaching for his head.

"It happened again, didn't it?"  he speaks vaguely in Gabriel's direction.

"Yeah."

Jack cranes his head to look and visibly recoils when he sees the dark circles under Gabriel's eyes.

"Fuck, Gabe. I ... I remember everything. It's ... I'm too damn old to be having nightmares like this."

"I don't think these are nightmares, Jackie. Who knows what the hell this SEP shit is doing to your brain, but nightmares don't lead to... this." He gestures vaguely at the remnants of last night's struggle, the sheets tossed about and the conspicuous hole in the wall.

Jack flinches. "You aren't gonna tell _them,_ are you?"

"The docs? No way in hell. I won't let them take you away to be some fucking guinea pig again."

"Thanks."

* * *

For the next three days there are no attacks but Gabriel is far from stupid and confronts Jack about it when they are alone in the training room.

"You can't fool me anymore. I know you aren't sleeping."

The signs are obvious: Jack's eyes are sunken, his face skeletal and bloodless. The very act of staying upright seems to drain him and he wavers gently on his feet, a dead thing reanimated.

"I _can't_ sleep, Gabe. I can't go back ... to that place." Jack scrubs at his eyes and drags out a haggard sigh. "I can't keep hurting you, either. It's just better this way."

"Better? It's killing you, Jackie. You're killing yourself when there's already people trying to _kill us._ "

"You don't understand what it feels like," Jack tries to put emotion behind his words but his mind seems incapable of the effort and his voice is bland. "To have absolutely no control ... what fear like that is like."

Gabriel snarls: "You know, I think I do."

He is feeling it right now, watching his closest friend, the man he would gladly call his soulmate _,_ spiraling down a path he can't hope to follow, fighting an indescribable threat. It's something that Gabriel can't fix and the frustration of it is driving his thoughts to dark places.

Jack hangs his head and leans in, resting on Gabriel's shoulder in a gesture of defeat. "I can't fight about it right now."

"I don't want to. Just... trust me."

The response is lifeless: "yeah, okay."

* * *

Gabriel has to carry Jack to the bed like they're fucking newlyweds because Jack's body finally gives out in the mess hall and he fell face-first in his gruel. Once, Gabriel would have found this situation hilarious, but Jack is a stranger to him lately, an inconsistent and fickle thing, a terrifying unknown.

"...Gabe."

He looks down. Jack is staring at him, bleary-eyed. Who knows how his brain could even be functioning right now, but Gabriel humors him.

"Yeah?"

"You're fuckin' beautiful."

Gabriel sighs and falls next to Jack on the bed. "Think you're exaggerating a bit there."

Jack pushes up onto his elbow and teeters there for a moment before deciding the effort is too great. He falls back, turns on his side to face Gabriel with his hands pillowed under his head.

"Not a lie, Reyes, I think I love you."

Gabriel laughs. _Such a fairytale they were._

A ponderous yawn. "What's so funny?"

"You need to sleep."

Jack's expression darkens. "No. I slept a little, right? It's fine."

"Nope."

"Gabe..." Jack's voice is dangerously low.

Gabriel silences him with a raised finger. "No buts. I'll be right here if something goes wrong."

"...That's what I'm worried about."

"Don't worry about me, sunshine. I can take care of myself and I can take care of you."

"Not sure if I believe you but... fuck," Jack's lids hang heavy. "Don't have the strength to fight it anymore, I guess."

* * *

Jack doesn't stir at all that night, likely due to his utter exhaustion. It gets better after that, more or less. The terrors release their terrible hold gradually, night by night. After two weeks Jack experiences them very rarely; after a month, none at all.

Their routine returns as the tension recedes. Inevitably, Gabriel becomes acquainted with the floor again one night two months later and finds Jack splayed out, limbs stretched to every corner of the bed, snoring softly.

"Move it, Indiana," Gabriel growls as he jams both hands under Jack's torso in an attempt to roll him over.

"Sorry," Jack murmurs, though he is practically unconscious.

Gabriel sighs, but with a hint of a smile on his face. There is serenity in the ordinary; despite the uncertainties of a life in an experimental and secretive government program, knowing that he can count on Jack to kick his ass out of bed and not give a damn about it is incredibly satisfying.

It takes certain skill to compensate for the younger man's dead weight, but eventually Gabriel manages to insert himself into the tangle of appendages. Jack latches to him with both arms and legs and they spend the night in the quiet comfort of two bodies meant to fit together.

**Author's Note:**

> First Overwatch fic and first fanfic I've written in 8 years. Not beta read, do be gentle lol.


End file.
